Jump to content
You must now use your email address to sign in [click for more info] ×

User definened selection as part of macro?


Recommended Posts

I want a macro and one of the first steps (not the first) should be dynamically selection by each time running this.

All things i have tried so far result in a static selection, not in a dynamically one. So, is there any trick?

 

BTW: any trick that an "empty" box appears like "Reday?" which has be clicked before the next steps run?

OSX 12.5  / iMac Retina 27" / Radeon Pro 580X / Metall: on! --- WWG1WGA WW!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

That sounds like its beyond the scope of what Macro's can do in Affinity Photo (APh) I may be wrong but there doesn't appear to be a way to edit a Macro after the fact nor add prompts during a recording.

 

PS. edit Reday to Ready ;)

iMac 27" 2019 Somona 14.3.1, iMac 27" Affinity Designer, Photo & Publisher V1 & V2, Adobe, Inkscape, Vectorstyler, Blender, C4D, Sketchup + more... XP-Pen Artist-22E, - iPad Pro 12.9  
B| (Please refrain from licking the screen while using this forum)

Affinity Help - Affinity Desktop Tutorials - Feedback - FAQ - most asked questions

Link to comment
Share on other sites

No there aren't actually such macro recording capabilities, it's also not possible to prompt (stop/halt/continue) for some user interactions here, though it would be a useful feature to have.

☛ Affinity Designer 1.10.8 ◆ Affinity Photo 1.10.8 ◆ Affinity Publisher 1.10.8 ◆ OSX El Capitan
☛ Affinity V2.3 apps ◆ MacOS Sonoma 14.2 ◆ iPad OS 17.2

Link to comment
Share on other sites

You can sort of fake stop/pause/continue by splitting a macro into two or more parts & running them one after the other, but without any capability to display a prompt as the last step of a macro you have to remember what they are or at least name them to indicate their intended run sequence.

All 3 1.10.8, & all 3 V2.4.1 Mac apps; 2020 iMac 27"; 3.8GHz i7, Radeon Pro 5700, 32GB RAM; macOS 10.15.7
Affinity Photo 
1.10.8; Affinity Designer 1.108; & all 3 V2 apps for iPad; 6th Generation iPad 32 GB; Apple Pencil; iPadOS 15.7

Link to comment
Share on other sites

34 minutes ago, R C-R said:

You can sort of fake stop/pause/continue by splitting a macro into two or more parts & running them one after the other, but without any capability to display a prompt as the last step of a macro you have to remember what they are or at least name them to indicate their intended run sequence.

 

Yeah, i can put 2 or more already existing macros into once new, but there is no prompt after each part, just the last prompt (in this case for all sub-macros together).

 

I mean you can edit some aspects of existing macros, but not at all: You can "uncheck (overjump)" a step and you can make the parameters again visible or hide and rename and re-adjust and you can add steps to the end... but you can not really delete a step or put  new steps anywhere in the line. 

I would say i´m 73% happy with the current state of editing. But more comfortable would be a workaround like apples automator. Here you can at any point rearrange/delete/add... like ever you want. 

 

But it seems macros are very slow. Try it: Make a macro just with some adjustments or live-filter which become after applying that macro a group. As long as it is in the macro-state its very slow. As soon you have apply that macro and the same steps(adjustments) are as isolated layers in your group and you edit there a parameter its much more faster. It seems a macro is computing each step of the whole chain, while the ready group only the current adjustment will computed, while the rest is taken more/less as "flat"??? Or is it just (de)compiled?

OSX 12.5  / iMac Retina 27" / Radeon Pro 580X / Metall: on! --- WWG1WGA WW!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

22 minutes ago, Polygonius said:

But more comfortable would be a workaround like apples automator. Here you can at any point rearrange/delete/add... like ever you want. 

Except that with Automator some things only are available or work correctly if everything is done in a specific order, & the same would be true for Affinity Photo macros. For example, something must already exist or be created before it can be chosen & anything applied to it as a follow on step.

 

36 minutes ago, Polygonius said:

It seems a macro is computing each step of the whole chain...

How else could it work?

All 3 1.10.8, & all 3 V2.4.1 Mac apps; 2020 iMac 27"; 3.8GHz i7, Radeon Pro 5700, 32GB RAM; macOS 10.15.7
Affinity Photo 
1.10.8; Affinity Designer 1.108; & all 3 V2 apps for iPad; 6th Generation iPad 32 GB; Apple Pencil; iPadOS 15.7

Link to comment
Share on other sites

18 minutes ago, R C-R said:

Except that with Automator some things only are available or work correctly if everything is done in a specific order, & the same would be true for Affinity Photo macros. For example, something must already exist or be created before it can be chosen & anything applied to it as a follow on step.

 

How else could it work?

Well, automator is not perfect, but you get a warning if you eg. want to move finder-objects BEFORE you have searched for them (as part of the automation, or selected by hand). And yeah, you can automate complete nonsens or really critical stuff... but hey, its not for little children.

####

Of course a macro must ONETIME compute all steps, but after this: Is it necassary to re-compute each step again and again instead just the steps beginning from the changed one and keep all before as "flat"?  I guess the layer-system works like this: just computing upwards from the changed part and keeping all unchanged before-steps as flat, but i am not sure???

OSX 12.5  / iMac Retina 27" / Radeon Pro 580X / Metall: on! --- WWG1WGA WW!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

7 minutes ago, Polygonius said:

Of course a macro must ONETIME compute all steps, but after this: Is it necassary to re-compute each step again and again instead just the steps beginning from the changed one and keep all before as "flat"?

I do not understand what you mean by "keep all before." A macro performs a series of steps, so there is no "before" to keep.

All 3 1.10.8, & all 3 V2.4.1 Mac apps; 2020 iMac 27"; 3.8GHz i7, Radeon Pro 5700, 32GB RAM; macOS 10.15.7
Affinity Photo 
1.10.8; Affinity Designer 1.108; & all 3 V2 apps for iPad; 6th Generation iPad 32 GB; Apple Pencil; iPadOS 15.7

Link to comment
Share on other sites

29 minutes ago, R C-R said:

I do not understand what you mean by "keep all before." A macro performs a series of steps, so there is no "before" to keep.

If you have a macro with much sliders or hamburger or checkboxes you can keep this macro as open as long you want and tweak them, which is often more comfortable than working with separate adjust/filter-layers*

In this case if i just change one of the last slider (= mostly in an applied corresponding group the layer above)  - is it necassary that all steps before get computed again? 

In comparison: If i have 3 kinds of blur (below) and a curve on top and change just the curve it goes very fast. If i change the "first" blurr it needs more time, because all steps "behind" must re-computed. So it works with real layers, but not in macros.

 

* I like to have all relevant parameters i want in one comfortable overview, instead this unwieldy doubleclick this layer and tweak there and doubleclick another layer, tweak there and go back and doubleclick again... Often some parts depend on each other and every way to shorten the necessary clicks are very welcome.

There are no adjustment/"filter"-container, like in audio apps, where you can put as much effects you want into one comfortable container with all parameters you need in just comfortable one-view-box. Macros gives me a similar behavior, but unfortunatley as one-way-ticket -after applying this container is away:-(

 

BTW: why are FX called filters? There are just 2 really filters in, plus the selection by color/transparancy...which is another kind of filtering. The rest are FX! But i can life with this;-)

OSX 12.5  / iMac Retina 27" / Radeon Pro 580X / Metall: on! --- WWG1WGA WW!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 hour ago, Polygonius said:

In this case if i just change one of the last slider (= mostly in an applied corresponding group the layer above)  - is it necassary that all steps before get computed again?

If I understand what you mean, then yes the macro has to be played from beginning to end each time you click the Play button in the Macro panel, applying each step in sequence to the current state of the open document. It must do that because there is no guarantee that the current state is the same as it was the last time the macro was played.

All 3 1.10.8, & all 3 V2.4.1 Mac apps; 2020 iMac 27"; 3.8GHz i7, Radeon Pro 5700, 32GB RAM; macOS 10.15.7
Affinity Photo 
1.10.8; Affinity Designer 1.108; & all 3 V2 apps for iPad; 6th Generation iPad 32 GB; Apple Pencil; iPadOS 15.7

Link to comment
Share on other sites

14 hours ago, R C-R said:

 It must do that because there is no guarantee that the current state is the same as it was the last time the macro was played.

Ok, i see this point.

And the compairing with audio is improper, cause audio is a permanent realtime re-refresh computing, each samplerate-point, for GFX there is no need to refresh every milli-milli-second, except for the reason you mentioned.

But however, container would speed up the workflow enorm - think of it, as a group with some filter/adjust layer inside and every time you load such a stored container this group will open with all stored filters/adjusts and each click of this layer-group will open a comfortable combo-box with all sliders you have defined for tweaking in just one view. Grafik-apps could learn a lot by take a look to DAW, something workflow-improvments from there could translated  almost 1:1.

I guess we all have favorite adjust/filter-combinations we use several times for special jobs in a more/less same way, so a library with user-defined-containers for each special job would be a great gift, instead to load all the wanted "layers" each time again and again as singles from different places and then tweak them seperatly....

OSX 12.5  / iMac Retina 27" / Radeon Pro 580X / Metall: on! --- WWG1WGA WW!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 hour ago, Polygonius said:

But however, container would speed up the workflow enorm - think of it, as a group with some filter/adjust layer inside and every time you load such a stored container this group will open with all stored filters/adjusts and each click of this layer-group will open a comfortable combo-box with all sliders you have defined for tweaking in just one view.

But there is no single, reasonably sized "container" that could store all the many possible variations caused by potential changes in the current state of the document when the macro is replayed in the Macro panel at different times. Even if there was, it would require substantial processing time to create & manage all the required state-dependent data on-the-fly, to say nothing of what would be required to determine what is usable in the current document state & to apply it.

 

As for the "combo-box" with all the sliders in one view, consider how many different sliders there could be for one macro, many applying only to specific layers at specific locations in the layer hierarchy (like child 1 of a named layer or a layer indexed from the top or bottom of the layer stack). Depending on the complexity of the macro & the layer hierarchy there could be dozens if not hundreds of sliders, & each one would have to be named uniquely or there would be no way to tell what each slider did or to what.

All 3 1.10.8, & all 3 V2.4.1 Mac apps; 2020 iMac 27"; 3.8GHz i7, Radeon Pro 5700, 32GB RAM; macOS 10.15.7
Affinity Photo 
1.10.8; Affinity Designer 1.108; & all 3 V2 apps for iPad; 6th Generation iPad 32 GB; Apple Pencil; iPadOS 15.7

Link to comment
Share on other sites

20 hours ago, Polygonius said:

Of course a macro must ONETIME compute all steps, but after this: Is it necassary to re-compute each step again and again instead just the steps beginning from the changed one and keep all before as "flat"?  I guess the layer-system works like this: just computing upwards from the changed part and keeping all unchanged before-steps as flat, but i am not sure???

Not sure what you mean with compute here, but may be you meant performing/executing in that context. - However, macros are just a recorded sequence of performed instructions which are then replayed (re)performed in the order they have been recorded. You can think of it like a list of instructions which is processed top down.

☛ Affinity Designer 1.10.8 ◆ Affinity Photo 1.10.8 ◆ Affinity Publisher 1.10.8 ◆ OSX El Capitan
☛ Affinity V2.3 apps ◆ MacOS Sonoma 14.2 ◆ iPad OS 17.2

Link to comment
Share on other sites

18 minutes ago, v_kyr said:

Not sure what you mean with compute here, but may be you meant performing/executing in that context.

I am still unclear about what this "container" could contain other than the list of instructions, & what there is about DAW apps that could be "translated almost 1:1" to Affinity or any other graphics app.

All 3 1.10.8, & all 3 V2.4.1 Mac apps; 2020 iMac 27"; 3.8GHz i7, Radeon Pro 5700, 32GB RAM; macOS 10.15.7
Affinity Photo 
1.10.8; Affinity Designer 1.108; & all 3 V2 apps for iPad; 6th Generation iPad 32 GB; Apple Pencil; iPadOS 15.7

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Honestly I don't know, since my initial understand of the term containers stems here more from programming data structures and nowadays IT related also from virtualization of complete hosted runtime environment of applications in one package (similar but not identical to VMs).

☛ Affinity Designer 1.10.8 ◆ Affinity Photo 1.10.8 ◆ Affinity Publisher 1.10.8 ◆ OSX El Capitan
☛ Affinity V2.3 apps ◆ MacOS Sonoma 14.2 ◆ iPad OS 17.2

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Thanks for interesting.

Nope, CONTAINER has not much common  with macros. They can look similar, but under the hood thats two different things.

Container are an concept which has improve the workflow in audio-apps (DAWs) since decades.

A container is just a combo of different FX (Grafik-apps call it filter and adjustment-layer) but they are FX (except Highpass or select just green or borders… The rest of „filters/adjustments“ are FX).

A container can hold as many FX you want / as your maschine can handle. And you can define ONE interactive Tweak-Box, for all parameters you want to see!

For example: You put a level-adjust and HSL and a white-balance into one „container“.

After some tweaking all „FX“ you will get a LUT-like result for toning/contrast.

If you happy you can save this CONTAINER for later use.

Later you can open this container to a picture (part of it) whre you think, it will fit. But thats the fisrt step. A container is not static (like a LUT or Macro…)

You open this container and the whole FX will open as a compact group, with all FX inside, but as closed group and exactly as you „preset“ it (levels are there, HSL is there and white balance so….)

But there is also an interactive panel, including all sliders on the last saved point which you can now tweak.

This is quiet similar to use a macro with some FX inside BEFORE press apply! You can tweak a GUI with just the sliders/boxes you want in one compact overview. In this case maybe just the blackpoint, the red-saturation-shift of the HSL and the „tone“ of the white-balance and maybe the blend-mode/opacity for the HSL…

(What sliders you see and which „default“ they have, is completly by you, by making a container-preset)

You could tweak as much you want non-destructive, leave the container and come back and re-tweak what you want… in the same compact-container-overview…

This is a very simple example what a container can be. A container could also be a blurr, a highpass a level a waves deformer, a recolor, a B/W and a selective color… or combine filigran expoxuer with smooth vibrande and maybe a subtil curve... or do wild stunts with maps, blurs, noise and crazy curves...  its all possible and its all "saveable" and defining just the parameter you want for later use....

If you mean, you this combination often, so save it and it will appear next time in exact this group with exact this sliders you defined for fast tweak in esact this values you have stored it….


 

But mostly we just want dozens of special un-sharp/level/hsl or hsl/BW/treshold/blur or (my favorites) blur/noise/blend…

However, most guys will usecontainert as „LUT“ or Tone-map or special-FX...… and thats nice, you can create yout own library with dozens of sub-categories and all of them keeps dynamically.

But also: You can tweak containers  to any point you want in a compact OVERVIEW!

Containers are „liquide“ Luts or liquied SFX, or liquied Fonts, shapes....… depending of the creativity that container-maker...

 

OSX 12.5  / iMac Retina 27" / Radeon Pro 580X / Metall: on! --- WWG1WGA WW!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

34 minutes ago, Polygonius said:

A container can hold as many FX you want / as your maschine can handle.

OK, but even in their current crude state of development Affinity Photo's macros are not limited to FX that could be 'containerized' & applied to certain layers or groups. A macro is just an arbitrary list of steps, some of which may be destructive & so influence the effect or even the applicability of any following steps. Thus, a macro is sequential, not modularized into FX containers you can 'patch in' wherever you want. You can't simply reorder or turn them on or off or even edit an "upstream" one without potentially rendering "downstream" ones useless.

All 3 1.10.8, & all 3 V2.4.1 Mac apps; 2020 iMac 27"; 3.8GHz i7, Radeon Pro 5700, 32GB RAM; macOS 10.15.7
Affinity Photo 
1.10.8; Affinity Designer 1.108; & all 3 V2 apps for iPad; 6th Generation iPad 32 GB; Apple Pencil; iPadOS 15.7

Link to comment
Share on other sites

The way macro recording and editing etc. works is also always very implementation dependent.

For example some tools like PS (where macros are instead called actions) do offer much more capabilities, there you can stop, prompt, rearrange, change ... recordable commands in actions (see a short overview here: creating actions). PS also offers conditional actions (what to do based on one of several different given conditions) and setting playback speed (step by step or pause for seconds etc.), thus allowing some more powerful capabilities in terms of macro handling.

☛ Affinity Designer 1.10.8 ◆ Affinity Photo 1.10.8 ◆ Affinity Publisher 1.10.8 ◆ OSX El Capitan
☛ Affinity V2.3 apps ◆ MacOS Sonoma 14.2 ◆ iPad OS 17.2

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.
Note: Your post will require moderator approval before it will be visible.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

Loading...
×
×
  • Create New...

Important Information

Terms of Use | Privacy Policy | Guidelines | We have placed cookies on your device to help make this website better. You can adjust your cookie settings, otherwise we'll assume you're okay to continue.